Overview

MODERN ENGLISH with its stock of some 700,000 words drawn from many linguistic sources is now a universal language. Its bedrock, however, is still Anglo-Saxon, or Old English, the language of the British Isles for five or six centuries before the Norman invasion. Of the approximately 60,000 words in the Anglo-Saxon vocabulary, it is estimated that 50,000 have fallen by the wayside, having been replaced by words derived from Latin, French, and other languages. The 10,000 words that remain, however, along with Anglo-Saxon cadences and grammatical structures, are what give English its distinctive flavor. This list is a selective compilation of about 3,000 Anglo-Saxon ancestors and Modern English descendants that are for the most part recognizably related. Apart from intellectual curiosity, of what use is a list such as this? Those who practice the crafts of writing and peaking know that simple is better, and that one way to eschew obfuscation is to choose and use words of Anglo-Saxon ancestry. May it work.

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9781463618797

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LENNART PEARSON is Director Emeritus of the Library at Presbyterian College, Clinton, SC, and is a Priest of the Diocese of Upper South Carolina.

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